things just won't do without you
by hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: "There wasn't a soul on earth who would have been surprised when Arthur showed up in Mombasa carrying a metal case for his favorite gun, a bag stuffed with travelers' checks, and a new identity for the summer." Arthur x Eames
1. Chapter 1

After the Fischer job, Ariadne watches them like a hawk, probably hoping for some huge romantic gesture, but is sorely disappointed when they exchange little more than a handshake at the baggage claim. Eames goes home to his tiny flat in Mombasa, and Arthur goes home to his midsize house in wherever the hell he lives when he's not working, and the team all split off to do their own thing.

That lasts about a week, which was surprising in retrospect — the easy money had been three days. There wasn't a soul on earth (well, maybe Ari, but she was new to the team after all) who would have been surprised when Arthur showed up in Mombasa carrying a metal case for his favorite gun, a bag stuffed with travelers' checks, and a new identity for the summer.

Eames is there to pick him up, of course, he hasn't been paying baggage attendants all over the world for years for nothing. "Hello, Arthur, lovely to see you." Arthur is wearing huge bug-eyed sunglasses, which strikes Eames as the funniest thing he's ever seen. Somehow, though, he swallows the laugh, because the best part of picking Arthur up from the airport is the little dance they'll do until they get home.

"Mr. Eames."

"How was your flight?" Eames takes Arthur's lone checked bag out of his hands, fingers barely brushing. He knows better than to try and take the metal case from Arthur.

"Hell of a flight. Had to subdue a drunk, and had to reassure the attendant that I did in fact have a permit for my gun, oh, seven or eight times. My gun, which was in a locked steel container far away from me, a locked steel container the only key to which I happily checked in the hopes of avoiding that conversation."

"Not like you need a gun to kill anyone anyway, do you?"

Arthur flashes him a grin as they step into the dry heat. "Not I, said the fly."

As they settle into the car, Eames maintains his character. The charade is always fun, and he has no real desire to see it end just yet. "Expect you'll be wanting to clean up at the hotel, then?"

"Hotel?" Arthur looks out the window, watching a storm build in the east. "Ah, well, they were all booked."

"All of them?"

"Yeah, Eames, _all_ of them. Every hotel in Mombasa. Fuck, every hotel in _Kenya_. All booked. Every single one."

"Pity."

"Yes."

Eames flips a passing motorist two fingers before he responds. "I suppose, if it wouldn't be too objectionable…"

"What's that, Mr. Eames?"

"Well, I do have a spare room in my flat."

"Well," and with that Arthur is clearly, obviously, done playing around, "that would interfere with our strict schedule of fucking whenever we damn well want, now wouldn't it?"

Eames's laughter spills out and he pulls into the parking lot of his apartment. He's still laughing as Arthur pulls him upstairs, as he fumbles with his keys, as Arthur presses their mouths together, hungry and desperate and happy. Eames only stops laughing when they're inside, door locked behind them and bag thrown across the front room and Arthur's lips and teeth on his neck. "Bed?"

"Bed. Fuck, yes, Eames, bed."


	2. Chapter 2

If they ever stayed together longer than a summer, things wouldn't be perfect. They both know that, they're not stupid. Three months is the honeymoon period, the golden age. After that, the problems start, and so Arthur's ticket home is ready and waiting, in a cream-colored envelope stuck on the fridge with a beer cap magnet Eames stole from their favorite bar, the one with the drag show on Thursdays, the one where the bartender always angles for a threesome and plies them with beer so cheap it doesn't matter that they get it for free. The ticket sits, a silent watchdog on the otherwise bare fridge. Arthur glances at it just once, when they're fucking on the kitchen counter: he didn't intend to, it was just in his eye line, but he can't stop himself from staring at it. He knows the contents like the back of his hand, like the way Eames's tongue feels in his mouth, like the steps in dismantling and rebuilding most firearms. He knows that three months to the day, he will leave Eames, as always.

But that's three months away, and right now there are long afternoons of sex and laughing over takeout and drinking and dancing and more sex. There are long walks that turn out to be very bad ideas because it's so fucking hot outside, and tall sweating glasses of something Eames claims is tea but is really a mishmash of various unmarked packets he found in drawers in the flat. Arthur just hopes they're neither drugs nor lawn clippings, and pours three heaping spoonfuls of sugar in.

There is bad TV and worse food, because neither Arthur nor Eames can cook anything edible. Eames's friend Joanna throws a costume party and Eames builds what turns out to be a kissing booth costume, and Arthur can hardly breathe for laughing as Eames soundly kisses everyone at the party. Arthur wears a top hat Eames stole from somewhere and borrows some of Joanna's eyeliner, walks around saying "ultraviolence" and performing a terribly off-key rendition of "Singin' in the Rain," because Arthur, it turns out, cannot carry a tune to save his or anyone else's life.

Sometimes there are night terrors, because Eames killed too many people before he left the SAS and Arthur's never had a stable subconscious even before playing guinea pig for the Army. Sometimes there are stupid people who say things, and Arthur has to hold Eames back or Eames has to take away Arthur's gun or any of the many permutations of those reactions. Sometimes there are unpleasant run-ins with ex-coworkers or just with exes, and Eames smiles in the way Arthur knows means he's thought of at least four different things to say that would utterly break the person to whom he's speaking. Sometimes Arthur is the one smiling, and Eames is the one casually looking around the room to double-check exit strategies, just in case.

Mostly, though, there is sex and laughter and food and guns and more sex, and it is, as always, made strangely more perfect by the explicit expiration date. Because of the envelope, because it's always there and always the same, Arthur never looks inside it. He knows the date, the flight number, his seat, the gate…everything. Why would he look at it? So he's to be forgiven, really, for not noticing that it has become ever so slightly thicker than usual. Every summer it's like this: Arthur shows up wherever Eames has set up camp, or vice versa. They act like they've got forever. Then, three months to the day, they drive back to the airport and fuck in a bathroom, a last hurrah, and they say goodbye. See each other on the next job, casually sleep together at night and keep up the facade of friendly rivalry in the morning, avoid touching each other in public. Three months of a relationship plus a few weeks here and there of what Eames calls an affair: it adds up.

If Arthur had bothered to think about it, he'd realize that this three months in Mombasa meant they'd been doing this for five years. Eames doesn't mention it. Wakes up early, some days, to look at Arthur's face in the bright sun, thinks quiet thoughts, walks through the plan one more time in his head. Five years, he thinks, is quite enough time for this pattern to go on uninterrupted. Eames is, after all, a gambler.


End file.
